African Americans', or Black Americans', access and use of birth control are central to many social, political, cultural and economic issues in the United States. Birth control policies in place during American slavery and the Jim Crow era highly influenced Black attitudes toward reproductive management methods. Other factors include African-American attitudes towards family, sex and reproduction, religious views, social support structures, black culture, and movements towards bodily autonomy.
Prominent historical figures and black communities have debated whether Black Americans would benefit from the use of birth control or if birth control is inherently racist and designed to reduce the Black American population.
Early sexual and reproductive violence Before the abolition of American slavery, enslaved Black men and women were victims of legalized sexual and reproductive violence. Some sources estimate 58% of enslaved women and girls between the ages of 15 and 30 experienced sexual assault, often perpetrated by slave masters and other White men. White people saw Black women as objects used to meet the sexual needs of white men. They also experienced abuse at the hands of the wives of the White men. White men often raped and impregnated Black women to increase their enslaved population. In addition, enslaved African-American women were subject to frequent sexual exploitation through arranged marriages in order to produce children and sexually violent encounters initiated by other enslaved people. The Jezebel stereotype shifted blame onto Black women for their experiences with sexual violence and characterized them as hypersexual. This is a stereotype that has continued within modern times. Black men were publicly lynched and castrated by white people in order to assert dominance and reduce their reproductive control.
After the Emancipation Proclamation (1865) granted legalized freedom to enslaved Black people, Jim Crow laws and Black Codes perpetrated continuing sexual and reproductive abuse of Black people, particularly women. Laws against rape only protected White women and consequently failed to protect Black survivors of gang rape, genital mutilation, and lynching.
Medical abuse and Experimentation Medical care for enslaved Black females was rare and often carried the risk of forced medical experimentation. J. Marion Sims, known as the "father of modern gynecology", victimized enslaved African-American females with his surgical experiments by not administering anesthesia. Other physicians coerced Black women into experiments, including ones developing the cesarean section and ovariotomy.
Black men were also subjected to unethical medical research, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Conducted by the United States Public Health Service, the 40-year study examined the effects of untreated syphilis in Black men in Macon County, Alabama. During the study, a treatment for syphilis became available, but the subjects were misled and denied treatment. Many of the subjects' families contracted syphilis, while the men themselves either died or developed disabilities.
Contraception
Enslaved people and birth control In resistance to sexual exploitation and enslavement, Black women resorted to their own forms of birth control, drawing upon African folk remedies. Southern physician E. M. Pendleton reported that plantation owners frequently complained about "the unnatural tendency in the African female population to destroy her offspring".
Early organizations After the slavery era, Black women mobilized in a variety of African-American women's clubs across the nation to exercise their political beliefs. Prominent leaders such as Harriet Tubman, Frances Harper, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell led the founding of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs in 1896. As issues of racism, segregation, and discrimination affected life for African-Americans in post-slavery America, the NACWC and its 1,500 affiliate clubs worked to promote racial uplift with the motto of "Lifting as We Climb", aspiring to show "an ignorant and suspicious world that our aims and interests are identical with those of all good aspiring women". Along with fundraising to establish schools and community services, the NACWC endorsed the movement for birth control as part of its agenda to empower Black women and help them achieve better lives.
In 1918, the Women's Political Association of Harlem became first African-American women's club to schedule lectures on birth control. The Harlem Community Forum invited Margaret Sanger to speak in March 1923 and the Urban League asked the American Birth Control League to establish a birth control clinic in the city. In 1925, Sanger attempted to open a clinic in the nearby, predominantly Black Columbus Hill area, but the clinic only ran for three months before closing due to low attendance. Much of the African-American population was transitioning out of the neighborhood and there was a lack of engagement with community leaders. Sanger continued to push for more clinics in struggling areas. In 1932, she opened a successful clinic in Harlem with support from Black churches and an all-Black advisory council. The clinic's clientele was about half Black and half White, and almost 3,000 people visited the clinic in its first year and a half.
Support
In July 1932, Margaret Sanger published a special issue of her magazine entitled the Birth Control Review. The issue was titled the Negro Number and called on prominent African-Americans to display why birth control was beneficial to the African-American community. Authors such as W.E.B Du Bois and George Schuyler contributed to the magazine, each stating different reasons why they believed contraception was an asset for the Black community.DuBois, W. (2011). Black Folk and Birth Control. In H. L. Gates, & J. Burton, Call and Response (pp. 497-498). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
DuBois addressed the issue of birth control as a means of empowerment for African-Americans in the article "Black Folk and Birth Control". DuBois believed that voluntary birth control could serve as a family planning and economic tool that would empower Black families to have only as many children as they could care for. He also addressed the issue of African-Americans and the belief that in order to gain a substantial amount of power, Black people needed to produce more offspring. DuBois stated, "They must learn that among human races and groups, as among vegetables, quality and not mere quantity counts."
George S. Schuyler based his entire article on the idea that the viability of black offspring was more important than the overall number of children produced. Schuyler's article, "Quantity or Quality," was a critique of the idea that sheer numbers, in terms of offspring, could bring African Americans the power and equality that they were working toward. Schuyler argued that the health of the Black family, and most specifically the health of the Black woman, should be the focus of the birth control debate. The article made it clear that if Black women were able to plan their pregnancies, then there would be a chance that the infant mortality rates would decrease. Schuyler observed, "If twenty-five percent of the brown children born die at birth or in infancy because of the unhealthful and poverty-stricken conditions of the mothers and twenty-five percent more die in youth or vegetate in jails and asylums, there is instead of a gain a distinct loss."Schuyler, G. (2011). Quantity or Quality. In H. L. Gates, & J. Burton, Call and Response (pp. 498-499). New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Opposition
Contraception was not unilaterally accepted in the African-American community during the early 20th century. Birth control to some seemed like a method of population control that could be administered by the government against Black people. Marcus Garvey and Julian Lewis were both against birth control for African-Americans for this reason, though their approaches differed. Garvey, as a Black Nationalist, believed in the "power in numbers" theory when it came to how Black people would obtain power in the U.S. Garvey was also a Roman Catholic, which may have affected his viewpoint.Daily Gleaner. (2011). Marcus Garvey on Birth Control. In H. L. Gates, & J. Burton, Call and Response (pp. 502-503). New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Lewis took a more "scientific" approach to denouncing contraception.Lewis, J. (2011). Can the Negro Afford Birth Control. In H. L. Gates, & J. Burton, Call and Response (pp. 504-505). 2011: W.W. Norton and Company.
Abortion Abortion continues to be a highly contested topic in the African-American community with reasons that differ from those within the mainstream abortion debate. Abortion and other forms of birth control have been stigmatized within the Black community due to the traumatic history of involuntary sterilizations that many African-American women were subjected to throughout the 20th century, as well as the history of abortion and infanticide during United States slavery.
Angela Davis, a Black feminist activist and scholar, argued that Black women were not pro-abortion, but believe in abortion rights. "If ever women would enjoy the right to plan their pregnancies, legal and accessible birth control measures and abortions would have to be complemented by an end to sterilization abuse. Davis speaks on the history of abortion and infanticide in the African-American community in Women, Race and Class. Her response to Pendleton:"Why were self-imposed abortions and reluctant acts of infanticide such common occurrences during slavery? Not because Black women had discovered solutions to their predicament, but rather because they were desperate. Abortions and infanticides were acts of desperation, motivated not by the biological birth process but by the oppressive conditions of slavery. Most of these women, no doubt, would have expressed their deepest resentment had someone hailed their abortions as a stepping stone toward freedom."Shirley Chisholm spoke to the debate from a political perspective in 1970. Chisholm described the decriminalization of abortions as a necessary step toward the safety of women. "Experience shows that pregnant women who feel that they have compelling reasons for not having a baby, or another baby, will break the law and even worse, risk injury or death if they must get one. Abortions will not be stopped."Chisholm, S. (2011). Facing the Abortion Question. In H. L. Gates, & J. Burton, Call and Response (pp. 787-791). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
The Supreme Court Decision to overturn Roe V. Wade on June 24, 2022, led to economic and health concerns for all women and specifically concerns for Black women. The legalities of abortions are now decided by state and local laws, meaning some women will have to travel to obtain a legal abortion or worry of facing criminal charges. In 2019, 38% of abortions were among Black women, 33% were among White women, 21% among Hispanic women, and 7% among women of other racial and ethnic groups. The lack of access to health care is one reason why the abortion rate for women of color is higher than white women. White women were also reported to have more access to contraceptives than minorities at 69% versus Black women at 61%. In 2008, Black women accounted for over 28% of abortions annually, more than any other racial demographic: this statistic is consistent with the reality that African-American women also experience high rates of unplanned pregnancy, largely due to a lack of access to comprehensive reproductive care and access to birth control.
Organizations